May 04, 2005

Hewlett Packard Customer Support

Isn't having customer support work well just THE greatest experience? (Well, outside of some really great sexual ones, of course.) I've become a bit jaded about support when it comes to computers because support personnel seem to never be up to the task...but this one worked out great!

I have an HP Pavilion Desktop Computer and pre-installed on the system is a program called "HP Instant Support". Frankly, I don't know much about it, except that I've used it 3 or 4 times. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the warranty period (unless it is sending information about my warranty to personell when I use it, or checking warranty information before allowing me to run the program), but for some reason the guys at Hewlett Packard seem to be ready to talk to me at a moment's notice, night or day, through this little chat program. And check this conversation out:

Jeff: (Wed, May 4, 2005 at 09:57:18 PM) My memory card reader is no longer functioning properly. When I plug in a memory card, the drive no longer shows up in Windows Explorer and I can not browse to it. The menu which used to automatically pop up when I'd put in the card no longer pops up.

Status Message: (05/04/2005 09:57:22 PM) Welcome to HP Total Care. We are assigning your request to a support analyst. This may take a few minutes. We appreciate your patience.

Allen: (05/04/2005 09:58:23 PM) Welcome to HP Total Care. My name is Allen. I am currently reviewing your Support request 4350144 and will respond shortly, so please remain connected to the internet.

Allen: (05/04/2005 09:59:21 PM) Do you get any error message?

Jeff: (05/04/2005 09:59:33 PM) (As a side note, this "Help and Support Center" would not accept my primary email address and gave the reason that it wasn't a valid format. I suspect that it didn't much care for the hyphen, "-", in the domain name. Someone should fix that.)

Jeff: (05/04/2005 09:59:45 PM) No. I get no error messages associated with the flash card.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:00:34 PM) I've rebooted twice to see if that'd help. I don't know what to look for to track down the problem.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:15:27 PM) I have 2 flash cards. Both work in my camera, neither works in this computer. Both worked last week, and one worked a few days ago on a friend's computer. Today is the first time I've had problems. I've been using them for 15 months in this computer 'till now.

Allen: (05/04/2005 10:19:21 PM) Please perform following steps and then let me know the result.
1. Click Start, Run
2. Type MSCONFIG
3. Click OK
4. Click STARTUP tab
5. Uncheck the "shwicon2K" program
6. Click OK
7. Restart the system
If you are getting a message "System Configuration Utility you are using the selective startup for troubleshooting your system", I suggest you check the check box in that window and click OK. This occurs if you are using the Selective startup option and not using the normal startup to reduce the number of startup programs.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:22:05 PM) The "shwicon2K" program is not listed within the MSCONFIG/STARTUP list. I searched the registry and it doesn't exist anywhere.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:24:45 PM) Okay. But just to make sure that you understand what I meant, I'll be rebooting after having made no changes at all. That wasn't on my list to uncheck.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:29:11 PM) I'm back.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:30:13 PM) The drive doesn't show as existing.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:33:11 PM) It has no moving parts, it doesn't generate heat, and it's got a dust cover. It seems like an odd piece of hardware to be having a problem.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:38:52 PM) There is an LED on the face next to the ports for the cards. The LED is lit. I have been attempting to use SD type memory cards. I just tried the older "compact flash" type of card and it doesn't work either.

Allen: (05/04/2005 10:39:24 PM) Please perform the steps and then try once again.
Please right click on My computer and then select properties and then select hardware and select device manager and then uninstall the card reader option and then restart the computer and try to insert the card and then let me know the result.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:40:39 PM) I was looking for that earlier. Where in the Device Manager should I expect to find the card reader?

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:42:56 PM) I don't appear to have anything like that in my Device Manager.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:51:20 PM) Is there a way to save the current configuration before doing that?

Allen: (05/04/2005 10:52:24 PM) You need to uninstall it and then restart the computer and then it will come back.

Jeff: (05/04/2005 10:52:36 PM) okay

Jeff: (05/04/2005 11:02:07 PM) Okay...the memory card reader problem seems to be over. It's found the memory cards and the option to copy picturs or play media files with Real Player or Media Player, etc., has returned. The root hubs have returned. My Tripp Lite UPS entries all (5) have yellow question marks in Device Manager (4 additionally have exclamation points), one of my webcams has a yellow exclamation point, and the found new hardware wizard is wanting to run.

Allen: (05/04/2005 11:02:43 PM) Jeffrey, Can I go for a break?

Jeff: (05/04/2005 11:02:45 PM) So unless you have some reason why not, I'll complete the process with the Found New Hardware Wizard.

Allen: (05/04/2005 11:30:48 PM) Jeffrey, Our focus at HP Instant Support is to ensure that you, our valued customer, always receives a satisfactory support experience. Have we accomplished this for you today? Is there any other technical issue I can assist you with?

Allen: (05/04/2005 11:31:47 PM) You are welcome Jeffrey, in my next message I will send you the closure request. If you are ok with closing the case, then please either click the Close Request button, or check the Close Request box and click Reply to close the case.

Thank you for using HP Total Care and providing us an opportunity to serve you through HP Instant Support. You may also receive an instant support survey. We would appreciate your feedback. Please contact us again if you require any further assistance.

Our exclusive Owner Services will help keep all of your HP and Compaq products up and running. Please visit our Web site at:

I am having the same problem with my card reader and cannot solve it. I am hoping that your information will help me. I have been on the phone and online with HP Support since 9AM AZ time. They have run me through most of the same things. I spoke with one tech who wanted me to restore everything to factory settings. Now they want me to do a Destructive Recovery. Any words of advice you could give me would be helpful. I have even been on the HP Forum and nothing found there helped either.....

I WILL NEVER AGAIN BUY A h/p PRODUCT ......H/P DOS NOT RESPOND TO ANY WARRANTY PROMISE IN SPITE
OF THE FACT THAT MY PAVILLION IS WITHIN ONE YEAR WARRANTY AND MY PRESARIO TWO YEARS.
I WILL CEASE CLAIMING MY RIGHTS AND WILL TURN IN A H/P SORE...WILL BE YOUR HIGHEST NEGATIVE
.. PUBLICITY....I WILL THROW AWAY MY "PAVILLION" AND MY "PRESARIO" AND MY H/P PRINTER. BUT THE WHOLE WORLD WILL KNOW ABOUT THIS EXPERIENCE THAT I HAVE HAD .
GOOD BY ...AND KEEP SWINDLING THE WORLD!!!!!

Hi Karen, if your system is not finding the CD drive in My Computer. Do this steps :
Go to Device manager and find he CD/DVD drive listin there and right clickn on it and Uninstall the drive. Then click on start and type regedit and click on "+" sign besides HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"-> System -> Current Control Set -> Control -> Class -> Click on the 6th entry from the top -> On the right side of the window look for the entries Upper filer and lower filters or both if they are available and right click on them and delete them. Then again o back to device manager and on top of the listings, there will be a Computer sign made with an entry. Just right click on it and select the option of "Scan for Hardware Changes". Restart the system and the issue will be resolved.

Yea, i own a dell n they wouldnt even help me wiht this problem, they wanted me to pay 70 somthin bucks to even listen to me, talk about some bullshit there, thanks alot, this help my flash card problem and good luck to ne one else, NEVER BUY A DELL!!!!

My Compaq V5120 also loses the DVD drive in explorer and aftrer 6 months of online tech support I finally figured out the problem - there's a DVD drive securing screw under the memory cover under the laptop. The screw turned out to be loose, so I tightened it and it now works. I'm guessing the number of HP / Compaq laptops I see online where the DVD drive disappears means there's a bit of a screw tightening problem at HP. And it seems it's up to us consumers to figure it out for ourselves as I refuse to mail away my laptop for an indefinite period to get "warranty" service...

Thanks for taking the time to post your experience. I have been strugling with this same problem for months (fair to say I kept trying to fix it myself and did not attempt to contact HP support, other than browsing around their support page).

HP products are the BEST! I have my computers built by my specs and I only buy HP products for them. I have a HP 882 Deskjet printer that I used with all my computers since the middle 90's and still using it today on my newest computer using WinXP. All my CD Roms, Writers and DVD's are HP. My oldest HP CD/RW is 11 years and never had a problem with it. In fact all my HP products work perfectly, new or old and I highly recommend them.

That sounds about right. I'm surprised he went on a break, though. You two were in the middle of troubleshooting, after all. :)

And Elliot, Dell probably had a good reason for charging you money. Maybe your warranty was expired or your issue was out of scope. Though, if you called in for this issue, your warranty must've expired.

Just found this site through google. Maybe you folks can help me. I have been trying to contact the HP Support Center through my help and support function. I last contacted them in 2004, but now when I try to connect, I get a box that says "Your support agent would like to close your request. Do you accept?", with two buttons that read "close request" and "resume request". Neither button does anything when I click on them (except they depress to show that the click was acknowledged). I can exit this box by clicking on the upper right "x", but this leaves me with no way to contact help and support, as I have been unable to find any other way to contact HP/Compaq. I am running a Compaq SR1120nx in standard configuration as sold (no h'ware mods).

Have just gotten a used Compaq Armada running Windows 2000 ver. 5.0. It has a CD/DVD drive. DVD's work fine, but it will not recognize the CD. Have uninstalled and reinstalled the Driver for the Compaq DVD in Device Manager, but no change. Any suggestions?

It's almost as if HP has no record of the "Memory Reader" being installed in their Pavilion notebooks... There it is in the "getting started" documentation, but this is the only source of info I can find anywhere about why this feature doesn't do squat.

I out of warranty, unfortunately, but would really like to use this feature.

I had the same problem with an HP dx2300 cpu (not recognizing the cd/dvd player). After reading this site I opened the box and reseated the data cable to the motherboard and viola! it fixed it. Thanks for the info.

i was trying to do what amil suggested but after clicking on the DVD/CD list their are two choices and i just dont know which one to delete please help me because my DVD player has ceased to work, the computer just does not recognise it. Oh yeh the two choices are TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632D or WO15313L COB144V SCSI CdRom Device so please let me know which one to delete!!

samra,
Just happened to see your post while researching my own problem. Since I can't tell from your post which one is the problem one, just delete them both. Your computer will then reinstall them both when you restart. The fix doesn't seem to be working for me....but maybe I have a hardware problem. Good luck!

I seem to be having a similar problem with a HP Computer that was given to our club. Neither the floppy or the CD/Rewritable were working. I had the CD/RW drive replaced. However, I had not used it to record any files on it. Now I need to, but when I click on the folder that I want to record, the only option I get is 'send to' floppy drive or other internal places. It appears that my computer recognizes the drive, I just cannot get to that option to record. My floppy still does not work. Any suggestions? Thanks.

My Card Reader devices are listed under Disk Drives. The USB portion shows 2 USB Root Hub devices and nothing is showing up as unknown in either section. I'm not sure I should follow those same steps. My LED light also comes on when I insert the card in the SD/MMC slot. I'm on Windows Vista Premium, however. HP Pavillion.. and so things are natually different to access than mentioned in the blog. I also do not have the "shwicon2K" program in my msconfig.

So I guess my question is, should I attempt to uninstall those 2 hubs and reboot and hope for the best?

---

In other news, Creative's Zen V Plus MP3 player talks about "Native Support" when trying to use their software with Vista, which confuses the bejesus out of me. And their live support pages for all of "Americas" do not load. Nice. Thankfully I have XP on my laptop. There are no actual beta drivers for that product.

Thanks in advance. (Oh my, just noted the original post date of this from '05 and these problems are still occurring on new PCs two years late. :/)

I have a new HP Pavilion d4890y, OS is Vista Ultimate. From time to time after removing a memory card, the card readers listed as disk drives either are no longer shown in windows explorer or when a card is inserted, the green LED comes on but the card drive does not recognize there is card inserted. Need to reboot the computer to make things functional again. This is a repetitive annoyance.

Would appreciate any help for a solution to prevent the card drives from taking a hike.

I have a Compaq DX2300 that won't pick up the card reader or USB devices consistently. I insert the card, but nothing happens. I am able to get it to work by deleting the root hubs, restarting the cpu and then the card reader drive works, but only temporarily. I also find that I have to reassign the map drive letter to any USB device that I plug into it before it picks it up. How can I retain the settings for the card reader and the USB drives once I get them both working?
After re-starting the CPU a few times, I have to go back and do this all over again, because it stops picking them up again. Do I have to edit the registry so that these settings are retained and if so, where would I do that at? Any advise is greatly appreciated.

I contacted HP about this and they sent me a bunch of instructions that I got to squeamish about attempting, as it was a long list of things to do, and things of that nature I had done in the past on other computers contributed to their forever plunge into the abysmal decay in their overall performance, so I simply gave up.

At this point in time, I have no taken any pictures of video off of my camera for about 4 months.

Instead, I purchased a $20 "SD/MMC Mini USB Card Reader." You plug the card into this, and then into the USB. I mostly purchased this because I lost the cord to go from the camera to the USB port, and would've had to order a new one, or pay 20 for this thing which is far more convenient to have. Probably the most annoying part here to this is that the USB ports are in the back of the PC which is housed inside a desk, and I have to pull the thing out to access and put back each time.

I bought my HP All in One Printer model 6310 about two months ago and it has gone crazy spitting out blank pages when I enter more than one page of a document to printed from the computer. What do you recommend. If I don't get some help I just return it to Best Buy. Thanks, Glenn

i have the same problem i bought a compaq n about 3 months after the damn thing broke so i called to have them take it back they didnt show up then the tossed me back n forth saying i needed this n that till my warntry wore out now i have to pay to get the damm thing fixed its a piece

Hi..I have a problem with my hp dx2300 which i bought not long ago.When i bought it,it was working on windows vista but then i decided to instal xp service pack2 but now the problem is that i can't hear any sound.The only drivers not installed are for pci.I have checked on the bios to see if the sound card is enabled and for sure it is as it is integrated on the motherboard.I tried downloading from hp website drivers for sound card working on xp to no aveil.Pls help.I can't stand having a computer with no music playing.Thanks!!

i'm recently buy a HP notebook (DV6767TX). I'm a SAP consultant by profession, & want to install SAP 4.7 on it. but when ever i'm trying to install windows server 2003 enterprise edition in it, it's showing no hard disk found. help me and give me the right instruction to do the above...

I owned a Compaq Impresario for 10 years and when I gave it away to buy my HP Pavilion Entertainmnent laptop in May,2007 it was still in perfect working condition. Because I wanted to remain with a winning company, I never shopped around for a computer that was not made by HP. What a BIG mistake. That mistake has resulted in a year of frustration and despair every time I turn on my computer.

I had heard that Vista was Bill Gate's Achille's heel, but if I knew it, didn't HP? I kept hoping the softward would be corrected because I knew there were many hundreds of other people who had bought an HP Vista computer in good faith.

If I neet to look up something on the internet I have to allow at least an hour to access the internet. Today I was lucky. It took only 25 minutes.....

My laptap is slower than a snail in responding to any command. Plus the fact that before the desktop appears on the screen many things, such as Quick Play, Total Advisor and other such programs appear on the screen. It can easily take 15-20 mimutes before the desktop appears.

Then the fun begins. I press the E icon and the busy blue circle appeaars, disappears, appears, disappears, etc. Then a blank screen appears. I wait and wait and wait while "connecting" is visible. Then, many times "Window Explorer not responding. Wait for porogram to respond" appears. I wait and wait while the busy blue circle continues to rotate. When nothing happens, I go back to square one, my desktop and start all over again. Yesterday, after one hour and fifteen minutes I still wasn't connected.

I have AT&T high speed internet. I installed it because my neighbor has it and says she's on the internet in a minute. But my slower-than-a-snail laptop doesn't give it a chance to perform.

I know my warranty has expired, but because I am rather a computer neophyte my problem with this HP laptop has existed since the day I bought it, I would like to know if there is anything HP can do to resolve this situation. I spent over $700.00 for a machine that is worthless. Please reply. chipper1951@att.net

I owned a Compaq Impresario for 10 years and when I gave it away to buy my HP Pavilion Entertainmnent laptop in May,2007 it was still in perfect working condition. Because I wanted to remain with a winning company, I never shopped around for a computer that was not made by HP. What a BIG mistake. That mistake has resulted in a year of frustration and despair every time I turn on my computer.

I had heard that Vista was Bill Gate's Achille's heel, but if I knew it, didn't HP? I kept hoping the softward would be corrected because I knew there were many hundreds of other people who had bought an HP Vista computer in good faith.

If I neet to look up something on the internet I have to allow at least an hour to access the internet. Today I was lucky. It took only 25 minutes.....

My laptap is slower than a snail in responding to any command. Plus the fact that before the desktop appears on the screen many things, such as Quick Play, Total Advisor and other such programs appear on the screen. It can easily take 15-20 mimutes before the desktop appears.

Then the fun begins. I press the E icon and the busy blue circle appeaars, disappears, appears, disappears, etc. Then a blank screen appears. I wait and wait and wait while "connecting" is visible. Then, many times "Window Explorer not responding. Wait for porogram to respond" appears. I wait and wait while the busy blue circle continues to rotate. When nothing happens, I go back to square one, my desktop and start all over again. Yesterday, after one hour and fifteen minutes I still wasn't connected.

I have AT&T high speed internet. I installed it because my neighbor has it and says she's on the internet in a minute. But my slower-than-a-snail laptop doesn't give it a chance to perform.

I know my warranty has expired, but because I am rather a computer neophyte my problem with this HP laptop has existed since the day I bought it, I would like to know if there is anything HP can do to resolve this situation. I spent over $700.00 for a machine that is worthless. Please reply. chipper1951@att.net

I owned a Compaq Impresario for 10 years and when I gave it away to buy my HP Pavilion Entertainmnent laptop in May,2007 it was still in perfect working condition. Because I wanted to remain with a winning company, I never shopped around for a computer that was not made by HP. What a BIG mistake. That mistake has resulted in a year of frustration and despair every time I turn on my computer.

I had heard that Vista was Bill Gate's Achille's heel, but if I knew it, didn't HP? I kept hoping the software would be corrected because I knew there were many hundreds of other people who had bought an HP Vista computer in good faith.

If I need to look up something on the internet I have to allow at least an hour to access the internet. Today I was lucky. It took only 25 minutes.....

My laptap is slower than a snail in responding to any command. Plus the fact that before the desktop appears on the screen many things, such as Quick Play, Total Advisor and other such programs appear on the screen. It can easily take 15-20 mimutes before the desktop appears.

Then the fun begins. I press the E icon and the busy blue circle appears, disappears, appears, disappears, etc. Then a blank screen appears. I wait and wait and wait while "connecting" is visible. Then, many times "Window Explorer not responding. Wait for porogram to respond" appears. I wait and wait while the busy blue circle continues to rotate. When nothing happens, I go back to square one, my desktop and start all over again. Yesterday, after one hour and fifteen minutes I still wasn't connected.

I have AT&T high speed internet. I installed it because my neighbor has it and says she's on the internet in a minute. But my slower-than-a-snail laptop doesn't give it a chance to perform.

I know my warranty has expired, but because my problem with this HP laptop has existed since the day I bought it, I would like to know if there is anything HP can do to resolve this situation. I spent over $700.00 for a machine that is worthless. Please reply. chipper1951@att.net

Hi,
Recently whenever Im on my computer the sounds works find. But after a while the sound stop working all together until I restart my computer then the same thing happens all over again. Can anyone help me with this problem? Contact me at: YoungDyme814@Aol.Com or Myspace.Com/YoungDyme814

Hi all... thanks for the helpful post. I followed these instructions (being the same that an HP tech gave me for the same problem), and it works... but only one time after reboot. Once a card is removed, I lose functionality for the remainder of the session. Any ideas? Thanks in advance. If I see any issues I know a solution for (or if I find one for this problem), I will repost.

Amil, thanks for this post. It still works (with a little adjustment - no longer the 6th entry, the 8th for me) even in Windows Vista OS.

=============================
Hi Karen, if your system is not finding the CD drive in My Computer. Do this steps :
Go to Device manager and find he CD/DVD drive listin there and right clickn on it and Uninstall the drive. Then click on start and type regedit and click on "+" sign besides HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"-> System -> Current Control Set -> Control -> Class -> Click on the 6th entry from the top -> On the right side of the window look for the entries Upper filer and lower filters or both if they are available and right click on them and delete them. Then again o back to device manager and on top of the listings, there will be a Computer sign made with an entry. Just right click on it and select the option of "Scan for Hardware Changes". Restart the system and the issue will be resolved.

I have a compaq presario v6000 laptop the problem is that i am unable to start my laptop when it start it shows error and again restarted this process remain continue till i off my laptop with power button please help of to resolve this problem. I an very thankful to HP for this technical support.

Comment Spammers: Amazing...there's not any comment nor trackback spam anywhere on this weblog. And yet this weblog receives thousands of spam attempts every week. You'd think that these guys would instead devote their resources to sites where they have a chance.
Comments: